ESPN (Buster Olney, IIRC) recently did an article on Randy Johnson and re-told the story you've told of the 'A-Ha' moment for RJ, when Nolan Ryan and another baseball guy noticed he was landing on his heel. He starts landing on the ball of his foot and all of a sudden he found control.
In that same article (I can't seem to find it right now), RJ lamented something to the effect of, I wonder why no one knew how to coach me. To which I thought, there are two reasons. 1) You have to let yourself be coached, and by all accounts RJ was something of a wild child. All improvement comes ultimately from within. and 2) No one knew exactly what to do with a 7' tall flamethrower, because no one had really ever seen one.
This is kind of the crime with Aumont, IMO. RJ and Mark Hendrickson and Ryan Anderson and others are out there to take lessons from for pitchers of his stature. There's no reason for PA to be locking his knee unless he's refusing to do so. And there's no reason to think he can't be a starter just because of his size or lack of experience.
=== Could the 1st-Rounders Help? ===
Lonnie with two Texas-chili-robust threads on Phillippe Aumont and Josh Fields. The idea, of course, is to replace Shawn "11 K's and 1 BB" Kelley with somebody talented.
As you know, I've got nothing against moving pitchers from college to the majors very quickly, and nothing against teenaged HS grads trying it, either. In principle, the pitcher holds the ball, and when he's ready to execute his pitches, he's ready to learn in the bigs.
In this specific case, however, I wouldn't recommend it, at least with Fields right now. From what I've seen of Aumont and Fields' recent vids, they are genuinely raw -- not Kelley-raw where they need some refinement, but low-minors raw.
..................
Fields has shown flashes, no doubts there, but the vids I've seen he is VERY capable of telegraphing a 94 fastball nice and straight, right down the tube. His breaking pitch also has looked genuinely inconsistent from what I've seen, and of course his results don't do much to disabuse that notion.
I suspect his mistake rate, and his HR rate, would be prohibitive. I could see him getting embarrassed.
Now, that's the last I saw him. Nothing's to say that he couldn't groove in very quickly -- pitch ahead in the count, stay out of predictable Ayala FB's, put people away with the big deuce. As soon as he does, he'll be able to help.
......................
Aumont is consistent enough, in terms of pitches executed, and probably could help. My guess is that he would be quite effective right away, but riddle me this? Why is a guy like him pitching to contact as much as he is at that level?
We've lamented the terrible CG deceleration more times than you care to hear, and demonstrated that you can't lock your front leg when you land on your toe. Considering that his body control is poor, and considering his size, he has thrown an awful lot of strikes everywhere he's gone.
If he is just going to pitch around that front-leg issue, and is going to "pitch to contact," I figure him to stall out as an above-average reliever for quite awhile. I would have different plans for him than for a #8 overall than for him to be a solid setup man, but if that's the way the Mariners are going, they could give it a whirl.
...........................
I'm not being very clear, I guess. I would see it as a melancholy thing to bring Phillippe Aumont up to do a relatively lackluster job in the 'pen, but he probably could.
You probably know that pitchers don't get called up from A+, the low minors, anyway, not unless they are nuclear. Mark Lowe essentially got called up from A+ in 2006 -- a couple weeks passing through AA and then up to The Show. He was "throwing the stuffing out of the ball," as one M's scout said back then. He was so OBVIOUSLY great that NOBODY could argue against him.
If Aumont wants to fan 46 guys in 29 innings, as Lowe did that year, the M's might promote him -- after giving him a cup of coffee in the high minors first.
...........................
Interesting, and encouraging, that the M's were smart and decisive with Roy Corcoran (assuming that an org decision tied in with the soreness issues).
I remember when we were kids, Bob Hopkins (sp?) had the Sonics like 5-17 to start one year, and they fired him, and brought in Lenny Wilkens. Lenny immediately took out the entitled vets (Slick Watts, Freddy Brown) and put in guys like Jack Sikma and Gus Williams.... but more than that, Lenny's in-game substitutions were weird.
One of my friends once told me, "If a guy's playing bad, Lenny takes him out. And if he's playing good, Lenny leaves him in."
Don Wakamatsu is reminding me of that. I'm almost ready to start assuming he'll put the best org pitcher in for Shawn Kelley. Isn't that something? What are we all going to do once the back-seat driving isn't necessary any more? ;- )
Cheers,
Dr D
Comments
He won't keep this up, but WHOA! 5 HR in 7 games back from the DL for my man Mike Saunders. I don't envision superstar results, but rather Mike Cameron-type .790 OPS (walks and doubles) with lots of whiffs -- the lack of Cammy's Gold Glove balanced somewhat by coming from the left side. But any kind of useful LH bat has gotta help. Maybe June or July?
It's a pretty bad sign when you have to look all the way down to High-A to find an adequate replacement for a pitcher who goes down with an injury, but that is what I did. I didn't even for a second consider any of the guys at AAA because I expect all of them to, well, suck.
Garrett Olson could be a quality reliever, and I've been beating the drum for him to become the LOOGY that the M's need (at least, I think they need). Maybe he'll be more than that, but I have serious doubts...
Lonnie
...there is no way he provides a significant improvement over what we currently have on the 25 man roster. If Balentien, who is seeing and smacking the ball really well, has to fight for playing time, what hope does Saunders have? Saunders, from what I saw last year at AA and at AAA needs a full year of AAA seasoning before he'll be ready to challenge for a 25 man roster spot.
Lonnie
I agree Saunders might not be MLB-ready right away, but I think what we need is a left-handed bat and I think that left field is the easiest and most obvious place to put one without disrupting much else. That's why I'm hopeful about Saunders' very hot start. I like Wlad and expect to see him out there more, but we need a lefty bat, too. Spectator
The Mariners *love* Endy Chavez. He's the left handed bat in left field. End of discussion.
Is that the right call? No I don't think that it is...but they clearly have fallen in love with Chavez.